Five Children Killed in Gaza Strip Battles

The Gaza Strip was bracing itself for an Israeli military assault last night after a Hamas rocket attack on an Israeli town killed two children, one an infant.

Ariel Sharon vowed to respond "with severity" to the attack on the town of Sderot, which wounded another 20 people, some of them children. Late last night, missiles ploughed into the Jabaliya refugee camp, killing two Palestinians, one a policeman.

Hours earlier a large Israeli force sent to reoccupy the Gaza camp to prevent rocket attacks killed two Palestinian schoolboys. Another boy was shot dead by soldiers near a Jewish settlement.

The police said the Hamas rocket hit a house, killing the two children - Dorit Aniso, two, and four-year-old Yuval Abebeh.

Another rocket hit a Jewish settlement in Gaza, lightly wounding a Palestinian worker. Sderot residents gathered near the area, some chanting "Death to Arabs."

A resident, Ronen Edri, told the newspaper Ha'aretz that he had seen a boy with head wounds lying in the street and tried to give him first aid. "There was a great deal of hysteria all around. People were screaming from shock. I tried to stem the bleeding for the boy, and then [ambulance] personnel arrived and took him away."

Another neighbour, Haviv Ben Abbo, also tried to assist the children. "I saw one child without his legs. We tried to help the other one but it was too late," he said. The attack was launched even though the army had sent dozens of tanks, bulldozers and armoured vehicles to seize control of Jabaliya refugee camp in an attempt to stop Palestinian insurgents firing their rudimentary rockets, known as Qassams, into Israel.

The army said it met stiff resistance in the camp, a stronghold of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, from Palestinian insurgents throwing grenades, shooting, and planting explosives.

But two of the three people killed were 14-year-old schoolboys, apparently shot as they threw stones at the tanks.

The deaths in Sderot, particularly coming at the beginning of a Jewish religious holiday, put further pressure on Mr Sharon to confront Palestinian insurgents before he forces Jewish settlers to leave the Gaza Strip next year.

The mayor of Sderot, Eli Muyal, has said that if European countries faced similar attacks, Palestinian towns "would have been wiped out off the face of the earth".

The prime minister called Mr Muyal to assure him that the government would respond with severity to the attack, according to Israel radio.

The army has made a dozen incursions into the northern Gaza Strip in the past three months, occupying Beit Hanoun for a month. But mortar assaults on Sderot and the settlements have only intensified.

The Israeli army fired several shells and rockets into Jabaliya, and bulldozers destroyed buildings. Gunfire was heard for much of the day. Palestinian sources named the two boys killed in the camp as Saed Muhammad Abu al-Eish and Ahmad Abdul Fattah Madi and said they were throwing stones when they were killed. The army said soldiers shot Palestinians planting explosives or attempting to fire rockets.

Doctors said that nearly 20 people were taken to hospital with gunshot wounds, at least seven of them children in school uniform.

Hassan Khalil, 15, who was slightly wounded in his hand, said: "They shot at us before we could even throw the stones.

"The resistance couldn't stop the tanks so we know the stones won't either. But we want the Jews to know that we will not just lie down."

The army killed a Hamas fighter on the edge of the camp, and in central Gaza shot dead a 13-year-old, Mohammed Jabber, who it said had emerged from a stone-throwing crowd which had entered a forbidden zone next to the Netzarim Jewish settlement and run towards the fence. Several other children were wounded by its gunfire.

In a similar incident near Kfar Darom settlement, the army wounded four students. In the West Bank, it killed two Palestinian gunmen in raids on Nablus and Jenin. A third died when his car crashed as he fled.

Hamas said it made the latest rocket attack on Sderot to mark the fourth anniversary of the intifada, which has cost more than 3,000 Palestinian and nearly 1,000 Israeli lives.